How do you judge a digital agency before hiring them?

If you have to hire a person, you can gauge their capabilities based on a few questions, their past work and by communicating with them. But what about an agency?

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An agency is difficult to hire because you don’t know who will be doing the actual job, the person you are speaking to isn’t the person that is doing the work.

There can be areas for miscommunication. So in this article we cover the different aspects of hiring an agency.

Team sizes do not matter

Agencies aren’t always large teams. You can’t judge a team based on their size. The best teams are tight knit, have a strong communication between them and work in tandem to achieve the results.

The size of a team does not guarantee that your work will be done faster. If there is an article to be written, it can be written only by one person. The same with designing a website, it can be done only by one.

Too many cooks spoil the broth and the same holds true for an agency. So when hiring a team, don’t look at the size. Look at the caliber and expertise of the team.

Very communicative, willing to meet face to face

A good agency is always transparent and look to establish a personal connection. So if a representative of the company is willing to meet you face to face and initiates such a meeting then it’s a green flag.

Another strong point is, how quick they are to reply to your mails and messages. This is a telltale sign that they are professional and focus on customers.

If you have a face to face meeting with a member of an agency, most likely they will be your point of contact and most likely be legitimate compared to an agency that just choose to Skype.

The questions they ask about your business

This is an important one. An agency is looking to help your business and they need to know everything in detail. An agency might not know how your business works as well as you, but it’s their job to find out the mechanisms of your industry.

So a good agency ask the right questions.

What is your main problem area?

Who are your competitors?

Who is your ideal customer profile?

With just a few questions, they will be able to understand the status quo of your business and immediately identify the strategies that will fit your business. So be prepared to answer the questions.

Been in business for at least three years.

A good agency takes time to establish, but it’s a cut throat business and agencies shut down all the time. If an agency don’t find any clients for 3 months, they can shut down because they can’t make payroll and rent for their offices.

So if an agency has been in business for more than 3 years that means they’ve had consistent clients and they have been able to find some successes. This is a good metric to judge if a company is decent or not and if they are able to service their clients correctly.

A Single point of contact

Also called a SPOC, it stands for a Single Point of Contact. Many agencies make the mistake of giving multiple contacts to deal with a particular client. This is tough for the people in the agency and you. Find out if they have a single point of contact. If they do, then it lets you conduct operations smoothly.

When multiple contacts are involved, it’s bad. There is a lot of miscommunication, it needs 2 to 3 people to get up to speed about your business and overall it’s a mess.

Clients have stayed with them for long

One of the best ways to judge an agency is. How loyal are their old users?

A good agency does not neglect their old customer to cater to the new ones. One question you can pose is “How long have your oldest customers stayed with you?”

An answer of even a year is a good sign because, a year in the business world is a lot. If an agency has businesses that have stayed with them for long, then it’s a very good sign. They are thinking long term.

An agency sees if your company is a good fit.

A good business fires customers. Not sure you saw that right?

A good business doesn’t retain all customers just because they pay money. They work with customers who treat them like partners and not as vendors.

Agencies who do business with everybody suggest that they are desperate and are in it just for the money. But, a business relationships is more than just money. It’s about strong communication, being on the same page and the ability to have identity of minds.

An agency generally should not work with a client who has unreasonable demands. A good way to find this is by asking them directly, if they work with all clients or only specific clients.

Work with a KPI Model

A lot of agencies who are confident of their abilities, work with a KPI model. KPI stands for key performance indicators. This is the number employees are judged on. They get paid their bonuses based on achieving certain targets.

Agencies do the same. They earn a base fee for their time and they charge a higher premium on achieving the KPI’s. This shows that they are confident of the abilities and most importantly are result driven.

To Summarise

As you can see. There are various factors that decides if an agency is a good fit or not. It’s definitely not superficial factors such as team size. There’s lot more to a team than just size. It’s ability, consistency, an understanding of your business, KPI driven model and more.

Although we are biased, Novatise is an agency that fits the above talking points.

Unlimited Learning

Author Jon Ng

My name is Jon. I started internet marketing since 2007 and have set up and sold off many websites and mobile apps. Here at SingaporeDigitalMarketing, we write about some of the best tactics and strategies to push your online marketing initiatives. We have created numerous digital applications over the years and have grown them into crazy money making assets.

Mind behind SingaporeDigitalMarketing

Welcome to SDM Blog. I'm Jon Ng, a Google certified Digital marketer based in Singapore.
I started this site with a passion to empower readers to know more about Growth Hacking and SEO Techniques.
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